“Having nothing dearer to our hearts than the preservation of our nobility, whose valour, so justly celebrated and dreaded all over the world, has only been tarnished by the irregularities of a monstrous frenzy; after having put up our supplications to God, which we daily continue to do with all our heart, that he may vouchsafe to open their eyes, and dispel those hateful illusions which inspire them with a thirst for a spurious honour; we resolve,” &c.
In this act it is clear that the monarch was most anxious to preserve the lives and services of his most influential and distinguished followers, and did not contemplate the shedding of their blood by plebeian hands; but, as this did not appear to have always succeeded, we find in the edict of 1661 the following clause:—
“Whereas it does appear that there are persons of ignoble birth, and who have never borne arms, yet are insolent enough to call out gentlemen who refuse to give them satisfaction, justly grounding their refusal on the inequality of their conditions; in consequence of which these persons excite and oppose to them other gentlemen of like degree, whence arise not unfrequently murders, the more detestable since they originate from abject sources; we do hereby will and ordain, that in all such cases of challenge and combat, more especially if followed by serious wounds or death, such ignoble and low-born citizens, duly convicted of having caused or promoted such disorders, shall be forthwith, and without any remission, hanged and strangled; all their goods and chattels, &c. confiscated; and we, moreover, do allow our judges to dispose of such part of this confiscated property as they may deem meet, as a reward to all informers who may give due knowledge of such offences; that, in the commission of a crime so deserving of condign punishment, every one may be induced to make proper revelation.”
It does not appear, however, that these interdictions produced the results that might have been expected from their severity; for in 1679 came out the celebrated Edit des Duels, which denounces the penalty of death on all principals, seconds, and thirds, with greater or less confiscation of property as royal droits: gentlemen being deprived of their letters of nobility, and their coats of arms defaced, blackened, and broken by the public executioner; those who fell in duel being tried by Contumacy, and their bodies drawn on a hurdle, and cast into the common receptacle of nuisances, being thus deprived of Christian burial. A simple challenge was punished by banishment, and confiscation of one half of the offender’s property. In regard to all bearers of messages, or servants who had attended upon their masters on such occasions, and who formerly were to be hanged, this edict mercifully condemned them to be only whipped, and branded with fleur de lis. Historians relate that the law was in general strictly put into execution in the latter case.
Other penalties were inflicted by a court of satisfaction and reprisal. A lawyer who insulted another was subjected to very severe penalties; giving the lie, striking with hand or stick, were acts that subjected the offender to imprisonment, with the obligation of making ample apology to the offended when released from confinement; and not unfrequently the injured party was allowed to inflict a castigation similar to the one he had received.
It was with this view that courts of honour were instituted, in which the marshals of France sat as supreme judges, and, after due investigation, ordered that such satisfaction should be given as the case might require, in addition to the penalty of incarceration, fine, or banishment, according to the nature of the provocation; and in various instances guards were sent to the houses of the offenders guilty of a contempt of court, who were obliged to maintain them for a considerable length of time. Although the institution of courts of honour, composed of the marshals of France, is attributed to Louis XIV, a similar enactment took place in 1566, in the reign of Charles IX.
In theory, nothing could be more plausible than these enactments. They were received by the nation with that enthusiasm which usually attends upon any innovation; even the Academy granted a prize-medal to the author of a successful poem on the abolition of duelling. In practice, however, the law was far from attaining its desirable end. The prejudices and false views of honour had too long prevailed to be easily eradicated, and human passions sought every possible expedient to elude these wise and humane provisions; it might also have been easily foreseen, that, the novelty of the proceedings of the court of honour once having ceased to be popular, the judges themselves, being soldiers, punctilious on such points, which from early youth they had considered as demanding the satisfaction of an appeal to arms, gradually relaxed. It must also be considered that the sovereign himself was a warlike prince, who had imbibed similar ideas from his early days; and moreover, as has been very justly observed, that, while he thus fulminated his royal anathema against duelling, he issued patents to fencing-masters to allow them to exercise their craft. The courtier well knew, that, if he screened himself from resenting an injury under the sanction of the law of the land, the laws of society would brand him as a coward, and the sovereign himself would withdraw his countenance in court and camp. Nor can we be surprised at the difficulty of checking these excesses, which were incessantly fomented by civil and religious discord; such was the hostility that prevailed amongst churchmen and their followers, that processions of religious bodies not only frequently attacked each other in the streets with the most virulent language, but actually came to blows, and fought with crucifixes, banners, and censers in Notre Dame and the holy chapel, pelting each other with prayer-books and missals—a combat that Boileau has ludicrously described in his “Lutrin;” it was observed that the most serious ecclesiastical fray of this nature took place in the church of Notre Dame, on the very day when Louis XIII. placed the kingdom under the special protection of the Virgin Mary.
Private outrages, and breaches of common courtesy and decency, frequently arose amongst the first persons in the realm. The great Condé gave a slap in the face to the Comte des Rieux in the presence of the Duke of Orleans, when the Count returned the blow with interest; for which retaliation he was sent for a few days to the Bastille. This Comte des Rieux was the son of the Duke d’Elbeuf; and it had been jocosely observed, “that the cheeks of that nobleman’s family had been selected as the field of battle in the wars of the Fronde.” On this occasion it is related, that the Duke de Beaufort, the son of a bastard of Henry IV, and who from his vulgarity and brutal excesses was nicknamed the Roi des Halles, or what we might translate the King of Billingsgate, asked the President de Belliévre, if he did not think that a slap on the cheeks of the Duke d’Elbeuf might change the face of affairs. The president replied, that he apprehended the only change it might produce would be in the face of the duke.
Shortly after, in 1652, this same Duke of Beaufort, having a quarrel with his brother-in-law, the Duke de Nemours, on a point of precedence, killed him in a pistol duel, at which four seconds were present, who, according to the laudable practice of the times, kept company with their principals; the Marquis de Villars shooting his adversary D’Héricourt, whom he had then the honour to meet for the first time.
Madame de Motteville, in her Memoirs, states that this said nobleman, his Grace of Beaufort, accompanied by six of his worthy companions, went to insult in the most brutal manner the Duc de Candalle, upsetting the table at which he was seated at dinner with several noble guests; and when the Duke thus outrageously insulted demanded satisfaction, declined meeting him, on the plea of consanguinity, as he was his cousin-german. Despite his unruly conduct, this worthy was soon after selected by his sovereign as chief of the admiralty.
De Beaufort was one of the principal leaders of “la Fronde,” and the most active partisan of Cardinal de Retz, who, although a dignitary of the church, knew the use of his sword as well, if not better, than his breviary; he fought two duels, alleging as a precedent his predecessor the Cardinal de Guise, who was ever ready to wield either a sword or a crucifix.
It was during this reign that arose the celebrated quarrel between the beautiful Duchess de Longueville, sister of the great Condé, and the Duchess de Montbazon, the mother-in-law of Madame de Chevreuse; these three ladies being concerned in all the intrigues of the busy court of Anne of Austria, then Regent of the kingdom.
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